


Reimagining Epics

by thebitterbeast



Category: Ramayana
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, Story A Day May, StoryADay, a series of flashbacks that are not in order, and his sister, mentions of Ravana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 01:18:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1570622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebitterbeast/pseuds/thebitterbeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But a dream man is nothing compared to reality, and she works hard to achieve her dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reimagining Epics

_Her children are born away from their father, as she sheds silent tears of anguish. Holding them in her arms, she swears to love them and raise them right, as the Princes they are. The ashram is silent as she pushes back the pain and presses on, no words falling from her lips about their father, loss and love in her eyes, but determination as well._  
  
_She will be their mother, and they her sons, and that is all she needs._

* * *

Only, she has never been pregnant, never had children. Never known the abandonment her bones aches from.  
  
She goes through her days as usual. Or as normally as she can when she has been having dreams of children she does not have, a man with the kindest eyes she knows, and also the coldest. Nobody she has ever met comes close to matching those eyes.  
  
But a dream man is nothing compared to reality, and she works hard to achieve her dreams. The ones that matter, the youngest lawyer at her company, slowly but determinedly pushing for human rights cases that land on her desk.  
  
And if she advocates the ones for abused women and abandoned children more than others, well, she can blame that one on the patriarchy.

* * *

 _She screams, once, in fear and desperation as clawed hands - hands that were seconds ago frail and withered - grip her waist and pull her to a solid body. She cringes away, and tries to fight him off, but he is far larger and far stronger than she, and her husband is miles away by now._  
  
_It was her own mistake that she stepped out of the circle her brother-in-law had drawn around their hovel. Her heart had gone out to the sage at her doorstep, asking for help and food - she had been taught by a sage similar to this one, and it had seemed the right thing to do._  
  
_Except the sage is the enemy in disguise, and she is caught in his trap, taken to his palace, praying that her husband will come for her._

* * *

The case she is working on is hard on her, because it hits close to home. She blames her nightmares, of the phantom hands she sometimes feels at her side, on that.  
  
A young woman is finally testifying against her husband, for years of emotional and physical manipulation. Years of faint scars and scared tears and coerced silences. Finally, finally coming to an end because he did the one thing she cannot stand silent against - there is a dark bruise on the three-year-old’s shoulder that has yet to fade.  
  
She remembers her mother bundling her and her older sister up, snatching them away from her father’s drunken, grasping hands and into the car. Remembers taking off in the night and never seeing that man again, the bags under her mother’s eyes slowly fading as the years melt off her face and she learns to smile.  
  
She remembers telling herself she will never be that woman, and she will protect those that are.

* * *

 _Her hands wrap around her stomach as she smiles to herself. Her husband will be overjoyed with the news, she knows. The kingdom will rejoice the heir, after all those years and battles, there is good news for the family.  
  
__When her husband calls for her, she goes willingly. There has never been anything she would not do for him, and she is not about to start now.  
  
__But this, while she does not protest, breaks her heart.  
  
__It is not her husband, her lover, on the throne, but the King - cold and stern, his eyes look once down at her, then away. It pains him, then, to banish her, to cast her away on the words of the world._ **_As it should_** _, she thinks once, viciously, before admonishing herself for her cruelty.  
  
__He loves her, and she him, that is not and has never been the issue.  
  
__But not enough, perhaps. Or perhaps too much.  
  
__She leaves that night, alone and pregnant, but not scared. Never scared.  
  
__She will endure, as she always does. She prays for strength, for herself and her child, and she endures._

* * *

There is one case when she almost breaks. The small infant can barely breathe on his own, and she aches to hold him. To cradle him and love him and take him home.  
  
His eyes, brown and lovely, open once as she looks him over, and she falls in love.  
  
But he is not hers, has never been hers, will never be hers. She is simply here to battle for his life, for his sake and for his family’s.  
  
She is more than determined, and she wins, as she sets out to do, and he survives the months the doctors were reluctant to give him and goes home with his grateful parents.  
  
And yet, she grieves him and the hole he leaves in her heart and does not know why.

* * *

 _She never allows the enemy to touch her in those long months she is held captive. He comes by, every day, to taunt her, or to tempt her - to ask her, over and over, to be his bride._  
  
_But she is faithful to her husband, the only man she loves, and even the enemy knows better than to test her._  
  
_If he dared touch her, she would rip him apart, and then herself._  
  
_A woman scorned may be dangerous, she knows better than most. After all, it is a scorned woman after her husband that has brought her to this monster, but a woman tested even worse so._  
  
_Her love is strong, and her faith even stronger._  
  
**_He will come for her_** _, she promises the enemy and his ilk._ **_And all who stand in his way shall perish_** _._

* * *

She is a lawyer, not a saint, and there have been flings over the years. Some dalliances even with her colleagues. People say one should never mix their professional and personal lives, but she has always been one for testing the boundaries.  
  
But she has never found someone who can accept her, all of her, and keep up with her and her ambitions.  
  
It has never despaired her. After all, who can understand the dreams that have her waking up and reaching for people who do not exist? Her life is fine as it is.  
  
She has her sister and her mother, and the people whose lives she helps.  
  
She needs nothing else.

* * *

 _It is years later that she sees his face again, eyes that are tired and lost and lonely and still as lovely as she remembers. Her sons know him immediately, but they are wary in the way only protective sons can be._  
  
_He wants to bring them home, to their home - but not her. She has no place there anymore._  
  
_The boys are angry and defiant, but she calms them. She does not look at their father, simply says her goodbyes, and then calls out to her mother, the mother she has been told stories about but never known._  
  
_The earth beneath her splits open, and she has one last look at the loves of her life, two faces calm and accepting, their hearts in their eyes, and one shocked and broken, anguish clear in his face, before she smiles, closes her eyes, as her mother welcomes her back into her embrace._

* * *

It is years later that she sees his face for the first time, eyes that are kind and warm and welcoming and lovely. She knows him immediately, her heart aching with remembrance and love.  
  
She greets him politely enough, works by his side as she is told, but ignores his advances. He wears his heart on his sleeve, but she is not swayed. When their time together is up, she smiles easily and wishes him well.  
  
One lifetime with him, loving him and losing him, is enough. One lifetime with a broken heart and two empty homes is not happening again. Sita had her time with Ram, and they were a story of the ages, but Zaraa dreams of **_more_**.  
  
Her heart does not split open without him, and she packs up the notes of the case, closes the file, and moves on to the next one.  
  
A doomed love affair does not define her, not in this life, not in any.


End file.
